Article July 5, 1913 Issue

FROM OUR EXCHANGES

with contributions from R. J. Campbell, Lee S. McCollester

[The Universalist Leader.]

John Robinson of Scrooby, Amsterdam, and Leyden, was a truer prophet than most men who have essayed the role. More light has broken from "His Holy Word." The conceit of sects which Robinson condemned has found its grave. The conception of truth on which they built their infallibilities has passed away wherever the modern spirit has done its work among the intellectual processes of men. The dream of this poet-preacher of early Puritanism has become an axiom of all great faith. A single century has flooded the world with new revelations from the Book which had been supposed to be signed, sealed, delivered, and interpreted, against all possible change. When John Robinson spoke his farewell words to those who were leaving Holland forever, he alone seems to have pierced the future far enough to anticipate God's ways with coming generations; for in that single expectation he raised himself above his age, and stated a principle of progress which has done its greatest work on this side of the world, when his name is only a memory. More light came forth from the Scripture during the nineteenth century than during the previous thousand years, and that light transformed the Book itself.

The very idea of what Biblical truth is which prevailed in the days of Robinson, has passed away. The notion that the Bible deals in abstract, dogmatic, "revealed" truth, primarily, has gone to the lumber-room of intellectual mechanics. It is being "junked" as fast as the human mind is able to comprehend the meaning of living truth. "I am the way, the truth, and the life" is coming to be understood.

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